Last year I had the pleasure to work with “Les Citadins", athletes from the university I'm working for. They needed new pictures to help their website get a fresher look. Now that their new website is finally online, I'm glad to share the result of our hard work! You can also check their website at http://citadins.uqam.ca/ 

L'année dernière, j'ai eu l'opportunité de travailler en collaboration avec les citadins de l'UQAM pour leur nouveau site-web ! Ce dernier étant désormais en ligne, j'ai le plaisir de pouvoir partager avec vous mon travail photographique pour ce projet !  Vous pouvez aussi jeter un coup d'oeil sur leur nouveau site-web à http://citadins.uqam.ca/ 

Technical stuff

This time, the set-up was a little bit more complicated than what I usually do.

First, the background had to be pitch black. The best way to have a pure black shot was to use a big black velvet as my background, so that the light does not reflect on it.

Then there was the lighting issue. Since I knew I wanted some big edge lights on each side of my subject I put 2 rectangular soft box just off behind my subject and almost looking at each other.

And finally, the main lighting source. I wanted 2 things : shadows (but not too much) and a hard light. This resulted in having 1 big dish placed high enough on my left as my main lighting source (kind of like the sun!) and then adding a second light on the ground at my right facing the subject to reduce the big black shadows.

Now the best part : water effects! I asked 2 friends to play a little bit with water dispensers in front of the lights. All that was left for me to do was a composite of the shots to make the perfect halo around the athletes.

Lights

Ranger RX Speed AS with 2 heads
1 old bowens prolite 120
1 old bowens prolite 60
Primary light : Softlite Silver Reflector 70cm 64°
Secondary light : Rotalux® Softbox Deep Octa 70 cm
Edge : 1 Rotalux® Softbox 35x90 cm & 1 Rotalux® Softbox 50x130 cm